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Age effect on the shared etiology of glycemic traits and serum lipids: evidence from a Chinese twin study

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Abstract

Purpose

Diabetes and dyslipidemia are among the most common chronic diseases with increasing global disease burdens, and they frequently occur together. The study aimed to investigate differences in the heritability of glycemic traits and serum lipid indicators and differences in overlapping genetic and environmental influences between them across age groups.

Methods

This study included 1189 twin pairs from the Chinese National Twin Registry and divided them into three groups: aged ≤ 40, 41–50, and > 50 years old. Univariate and bivariate structural equation models (SEMs) were conducted on glycemic indicators and serum lipid indicators, including blood glucose (GLU), glycated hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c), total cholesterol (TC), triglycerides (TG), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), in the total sample and three age groups.

Results

All phenotypes showed moderate to high heritability (0.37–0.64). The heritability of HbA1c demonstrated a downward trend with age (HbA1c: 0.50–0.79), while others remained relatively stable (GLU: 0.55–0.62, TC: 0.58–0.66, TG: 0.50–0.63, LDL-C: 0.24–0.58, HDL-C: 0.31–0.57). The bivariate SEMs demonstrated that GLU and HbA1c were correlated with each serum lipid indicator (0.10–0.17), except HDL-C. Except for HbA1c and LDL-C, as well as HbA1c and HDL-C, differences in genetic correlations underlying glycemic traits and serum lipids between age groups were observed, with the youngest group showing a significantly higher genetic correlation than the oldest group.

Conclusion

Across the whole adulthood, genetic influences were consistently important for GLU, TC, TG, LDL-C and HDL-C, and age may affect the shared genetic influences between glycemic traits and serum lipids. Further studies are needed to elucidate the role of age in the interactions of genes related to glycemic traits and serum lipids.

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Data availability

The datasets analyzed during the current study are not publicly available but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We thank all the participants and project staff who took part in the Chinese National Twin Registry for their contributions.

Funding

This study was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (82073633, 81973126, 81573223), the Special Fund for Health Scientific Research in the Public Welfare (201502006, 201002007), and Peking University Outstanding Discipline Construction Project of Epidemiology and Biostatistics.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Peking University, Beijing, China

    Y. Wang, X. Hong, W. Cao, J. Lv, C. Yu, T. Huang, D. Sun, C. Liao, Y. Pang, W. Gao & L. Li

  2. Qingdao Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Qingdao, China

    Z. Pang

  3. Zhejiang Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Hangzhou, China

    M. Yu

  4. Jiangsu Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Nanjing, China

    H. Wang

  5. Sichuan Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Chengdu, China

    X. Wu

  6. Heilongjiang Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Harbin, China

    Y. Liu

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  1. Y. Wang
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  2. X. Hong
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Contributions

WG conceived and designed the study; ZP, MY, HW, XW, and YL helped conduct the field study and collect the data; XH, WC, JL, CY, TH, DS, CL and YP contributed to interpreting the results and provided critical comments; LL designed and supervised the conduct of the whole study and obtained funding; and YW analyzed data and drafted the manuscript. All authors reviewed and approved the final version of the manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to W. Gao or L. Li.

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The authors declared no conflict of interest in this study.

Ethical approval

This study was performed in line with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki. Ethics approval was accepted by the Biomedical Ethics Committee at Peking University, Beijing, China (IRB00001052-13022/14021).

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Wang, Y., Hong, X., Cao, W. et al. Age effect on the shared etiology of glycemic traits and serum lipids: evidence from a Chinese twin study. J Endocrinol Invest 47, 535–546 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40618-023-02164-7

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